1. Technical Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to an output requesting apparatus, an output apparatus, and a computer program product for requesting output of data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a large number of printing apparatuses such as printers are installed in offices. The printing apparatuses are connected to a network, and accessible from various places. To use these printing apparatuses through the network, drag-and-drop operation is often used for initial setting of the printing apparatuses, printing, and the like. For example, printing is started when a file is dragged and dropped onto a printer icon.
In a print-control operation system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-337765, a print icon in which print conditions are set in advance and a file icon of a file to be printed are displayed on a display screen. When the file icon is dragged and dropped on the print icon on the display screen, setting of a printer indicated by the print icon is displayed. Printing of the file is performed under the print conditions set in the print icon. This enables a user to instruct printing and check print settings by an intuitive operation of dragging and dropping a file.
However, in the conventional technology, the user can find a position of a printer set by drag-and-drop operation relying only on the memory about installation of the printer. When there are printers of similar models, it is difficult to distinguish the printers. Besides, the user cannot grasp a position of a user personal computer (PC), positions of PCs of others, and positions of printers. When the user outputs a file from a printer that is not usually used, a new printer driver needs to be set. Therefore, complicated work is inevitable.
In the conventional technology, when a file icon is dragged and dropped onto the printer icon, it is difficult to determine a position of a printer to which the printer icon corresponds. It is also unclear whether a printer by which the user intends to print a file using the PC is a printer in a position optimum for the user. In this case, in particular, when the user outputs a document file from a printer near another person as easily as transmitting a facsimile to the person, a positional relation among the printers is unclear, and it is difficult to properly select a printer. Even if a printer is selected, setting work for the printer is necessary.